October 29, 2009

Failing the lack of an “upload button” for the 500 plus hours of research I’ve put into the swine flu issue over the past six months I’d like to introduce you to The Flu Case, a site run by Jane Burgermeister, an Austrian journalist who has kept a close eye on the swine flu since it emerged back in April.

She has catalogued a vast amount of information, everything from the mainstream to the radical.

I continue to use her site on a regular basis as one of my starting points for research. Some of her posts may seem alarmist and outrageous, particularly if you are new to the issue. Yet, I’ve been shocked to find, time and time again, the most damning evidence to support these claims can often be ferreted out from official sources.

However, you should never trust any single source.

There are numerous other vaccine critics, some of whom I beginning to add to my links section. Or simply google or search on YouTube for swine flu vaccine side effects/dangers/hoax etc. There is a plethora of criticism about this vaccination program.

A simple google news search is a another good starting point. Remember you can limit it by date, country etc.

I’d also highly recommend taking a look at the pro-vaccine information available from The World Health Organization, Centre of Diseases Control, Health Emergency here in Australia, the relevant pharmaceutical company’s swine flu vaccine product information, flu vaccine studies and government immunisation program sites. Apply a little critical thinking to these sources and it will go a long way.

With so much conflicting information it can be difficult to evaluate the evidence. It’s easy to present a plausible argument for or against an issue particularly if you isolate it from its context. To effectively evaluate information you need to put it in context by gaining an understanding of the back story.

Add the history of the pharmaceutical industry and medical politics to the picture and the pro-vaccination argument starts to look very shaky. There countless sites with information on the internet. If you are sceptical and want something a little more credibility there are dozens of books on medical and pharmaceutical politics – check out amazon.com. A couple of my favourites are even a couple written by past editors of prestigious medical journals who are scathingly critical of the lack of good science in medical studies, pharmaceutical corruption and its infiltration of medicine and regulatory agencies.

Add that to the whistleblowers, the past drug failures and scandals, over 300,000 court cases, the active suppression of alternatives through legal action, regulation and de-registration of dissenters, and the deep politics behind the establishment of the World Health Organisation and the UN and you’ll begin to realise the critics are not “crackpots” and “conspiracy theorists” they’re just people who have taken the time to find out what is really going on.

If you head down that path be prepared to be disturbed not only by the corruption you’ll uncover but also the lack of transparency, misinformation and spin from what any reasonable person would have considered credible sources.

October 29, 2009

Dr. Diane Harper, lead researcher in the development of two human papilloma virus vaccines, Gardasil and Cervarix, said the controversial drugs will do little to reduce cervical cancer rates and, even though they’re being recommended for girls as young as nine, there have been no efficacy trials in children under the age of 15.

Dr. Harper, director of the Gynecologic Cancer Prevention Research Group at the University of Missouri, made these remarks during an address at the 4th International Public Conference on Vaccination which took place in Reston, Virginia on Oct. 2-4. Although her talk was intended to promote the vaccine, participants said they came away convinced the vaccine should not be received.

“I came away from the talk with the perception that the risk of adverse side effects is so much greater than the risk of cervical cancer, I couldn’t help but question why we need the vaccine at all,” said Joan Robinson, Assistant Editor at the Population Research Institute.

Dr. Harper began her remarks by explaining that 70 percent of all HPV infections resolve themselves without treatment within a year. Within two years, the number climbs to 90 percent. Of the remaining 10 percent of HPV infections, only half will develop into cervical cancer, which leaves little need for the vaccine.

She went on to surprise the audience by stating that the incidence of cervical cancer in the U.S. is already so low that “even if we get the vaccine and continue PAP screening, we will not lower the rate of cervical cancer in the US.”

There will be no decrease in cervical cancer until at least 70 percent of the population is vaccinated, and even then, the decrease will be minimal.

Apparently, conventional treatment and preventative measures are already cutting the cervical cancer rate by four percent a year. At this rate, in 60 years, there will be a 91.4 percent decline just with current treatment. Even if 70 percent of women get the shot and required boosters over the same time period, which is highly unlikely, Harper says Gardasil still could not claim to do as much as traditional care is already doing.

Dr. Harper, who also serves as a consultant to the World Health Organization, further undercut the case for mass vaccination by saying that “four out of five women with cervical cancer are in developing countries.”

Ms. Robinson said she could not help but wonder, “If this is the case, then why vaccinate at all? But from the murmurs of the doctors in the audience, it was apparent that the same thought was occurring to them.”

However, at this point, Dr. Harper dropped an even bigger bombshell on the audience when she announced that, “There have been no efficacy trials in girls under 15 years.”

Merck, the manufacturer of Gardasil, studied only a small group of girls under 16 who had been vaccinated, but did not follow them long enough to conclude sufficient presence of effective HPV antibodies.

This is not the first time Dr. Harper revealed the fact that Merck never tested Gardasil for safety in young girls. During a 2007 interview with KPC News.com, she said giving the vaccine to girls as young as 11 years-old “is a great big public health experiment.”

At the time, which was at the height of Merck’s controversial drive to have the vaccine mandated in schools, Dr. Harper remained steadfastly opposed to the idea and said she had been trying for months to convince major television and print media about her concerns, “but no one will print it.”

“It is silly to mandate vaccination of 11 to 12 year old girls,” she said at the time. “There also is not enough evidence gathered on side effects to know that safety is not an issue.”

When asked why she was speaking out, she said: “I want to be able to sleep with myself when I go to bed at night.” Since the drug’s introduction in 2006, the public has been learning many of these facts the hard way. To date, 15,037 girls have officially reported adverse side effects from Gardasil to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS). These adverse reactions include Guilliane Barre, lupus, seizures, paralysis, blood clots, brain inflammation and many others. The CDC acknowledges that there have been 44 reported deaths.

Dr. Harper also participated in the research on Glaxo-Smith-Kline’s version of the drug, Cervarix, currently in use in the UK but not yet approved here. Since the government began administering the vaccine to school-aged girls last year, more than 2,000 patients reported some kind of adverse reaction including nausea, dizziness, blurred vision, convulsions, seizures and hyperventilation. Several reported multiple reactions, with 4,602 suspected side-effects recorded in total. The most tragic case involved a 14 year-old girl who dropped dead in the corridor of her school an hour after receiving the vaccination.

The outspoken researcher also weighed in last month on a report published in the Journal of the American Medical Association that raised questions about the safety of the vaccine, saying bluntly: “The rate of serious adverse events is greater than the incidence rate of cervical cancer.”

Ms. Robinson said she respects Dr. Harper’s candor. “I think she’s a scientist, a researcher, and she’s genuine enough a scientist to be open about the risks. I respect that in her.”

However, she failed to make the case for Gardasil. “For me, it was hard to resist the conclusion that Gardasil does almost nothing for the health of American women.”

The news is slowly creeping out.

When they were offering vaccinations at my daughter’s school I hunted out the Australian data on cervical cancer from government sources. I was shocked at the extremely low incidence and rate of death from the cancer. It seemed absurd, on that fact alone, to progressively vaccinate the entire female population – with as yet unqualified risks – against a disease they were highly unlikely to contract. (I don’t have the figures on hand right now but, time permitting, will hunt them out and add them to this post. Failing that please do a search yourself. You’ll be quite shocked.)

October 27, 2009

Thimerosal (or thiomersal) is a mercury-based preservative used in vaccines, consisting of approximately 50% mercury. It has been removed from many of the childhood vaccines but is still used in flu shots, which will be given to all adults including pregnant women. Medical authorities persist in claiming mercury in vaccines is safe, despite evidence to the contrary. (Take a look at Dr Ayoub’s videos as a basic introduction and I’ll gradually provide other links over the coming weeks).

Thimerosal is listed as one of the ingredients in CSL’s swine flu vaccine (the suppliers of the vaccine in Australia) and also in the vaccines produced by other pharmaceutical companies for supply worldwide.

Mercury is also present in fish and amalgam fillings.

We are assured each of these exposures is safe but take a look at this clip to understand how mercury produces brain damage even at very low levels.

CSL’s product information sheet for Panvax states there are 50 micrograms of thimerosal in each dose. To give you some idea of the relative toxicity of that dosage take a look at one of the slides from Dr Ayoub’s presentation:

Remembering that thimerosal comprises approximately 50% mercury we can see that Panvax’s 50 mcg dose would contain about 25 mcg of mercury as per the above example.

In water two parts mercury per billion renders it unsafe to drink. Toxic waste is considered 200 parts per billion. Yet fish is deemed safe to consume around the 1000 ppb mark. And vaccines dwarf other exposures with a whooping 50,000 parts per billion! As Dr Ayoub say’s if the doctor dropped the vaccine on the floor it would be considered toxic waste yet we see fit to inject it into the human body.

CSL is currently testing a swine flu vaccine for children under 10 that will not contain thimerosal. Which begs the obvious question: if mercury in vaccines is so safe then why is there any need to produce a thimerosal-free vaccine for children?

October 26, 2009

The Australian press has been reporting the government is spending $100 million on the swine flu vaccine. That’s not exactly correct, in fact it is far from correct. The hundred million in question was the initial government grant to CSL to develop the vaccine.

The actual cost of the program will blow out to over a billion dollars:

The latest deaths brought the total to 472 since the beginning of the year.

But that figure is well down on the 1,073 influenza deaths registered in the same period last year.

However, what is causing the concern is the rate at which the deaths due to Asian Flu are increasing.

The elderly and young children and those with heart or lung disease, are influenza’s chief victims with many dying of secondary problems, such as bronchial pneumonia.

The killing power of influenza comes from the ability of the virus to mutate easily and rapidly meaning a new vaccine must be produced to deal with each strain.

But it is rare for an epidemic to be transmitted beyond national boundaries and become a pandemic – the last was the Spanish Flu outbreak of 1918-1920.

In Context

By December 3,550 people had died from influenza in England and Wales – three times as many flu fatalities as in the corresponding period of 1956.After the vaccine was made available deaths fell but a second wave of the virus in November saw fatalities rise again.

One hundred thousand deaths worldwide were attributed to Asian Flu – nearly 70,000 of them in the United States.

However, the 1957 influenza outbreak was by no means as severe as the other two main pandemics of the 20th century.

During 1918-1920 Spanish Flu resulted in up to 40 million deaths worldwide while in 1968 Hong Kong Flu claimed 700,000 victims.

It is chilling in similarity to reports appearing in the world press over the last few months.

One sentence is of particular interest:

To give the fullest protection against the flu strain two injections are needed at an interval of not less than three weeks.

In the context section you’ll notice:

After the vaccine was made available deaths fell but a second wave of the virus in November saw fatalities rise again.

Let’s think about that…

The vaccine was reported as being made available on 1st October. We know two shots, three weeks apart were necessary for ‘protection’. If the population was vaccinated immediately that would take us into the third week of October. So in which week did the deaths fall after vaccination before they rose again in November? There’s not exactly much room to manoeuvre! Given that it no doubt took many weeks or indeed months to vaccinate the population, the surge in deaths actually seems to coincide with the introduction of the vaccine. It certainly opens up the possibility that the second wave may even have been triggered by the vaccination.